Streaming media is multimedia, such as video and audio content, which is received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider. With streaming media, a client media player can start playing media content before the entire file has been transmitted from a server, e.g., over a telecommunications network. For example, a user may visit a media streaming website using a web browser running on a personal computing device. The user may play multimedia content, including video and audio portions, in a media player from the media streaming website. The streaming provider may transmit the audio and video portions of the content to the personal computing device over a network, such as the Internet, which may be played back in the media player.
Many users stream multimedia content, including video and audio components, to their personal computers. One example of the multimedia content is a music video. In many cases, however, a user may perform other tasks while the multimedia content is streaming, such as web browsing, using productivity applications, or other tasks. In these cases, the website containing the media player is minimized or shifted to the background and the user is effectively using the media player as a music only player. The video component of the multimedia content continues to stream to the user's computer, using considerable network bandwidth and resources, even though the video portion of the content is not being viewed by the user.